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Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

My Daughter Claire gave birth to her first child,our first granchild on Wednesday January 11th,2012. She had been due on the 6th. Little Winnie was born born weighing 7 pounds 2 ounces at 5.16pm at the QEQM Hospital Margate Kent.
My wife Julie gave birth to Claire on 11th of June 1986.She had also been due on the 6th. Claire and Julie were both in labour for the same time and Julie gave birth to Claire at 4.15pm Taking BST in account I think I'm right in concluding this would be the same time....at the same Hospital.

We were always told as children by our mother that her grandfather had spent some time in India. When I started researching the family tree a few years ago I asked my aunt (my mother's sister) for information, and among other things she told me that her grandfather's first wife had died in India. I had been trying off and on to find out more, particularly when the IGI started putting Indian records on the internet, to no avail. I visited my aunt again in the autumn of 2011 and she showed me a photograph of the company my great grandfather had part-owned.

Years ago, I texted my friend Kath with the silliest thing I could think of, which was 'Put that sausage down! You don't know where it's been!'
I forgot about it until I saw her again a few weeks later. The text had arrived when Kath was walking down the main street eating a sausage bap! She was convinced that I had been watching her from a shop window or something and I could never persuade her otherwise.

being born on my mother's birthday is coincidence enough but, after she had died, my sister and I decided to take her ashes from London to Northumberland to be interred with her parents, pretty sure this is what she would have wanted, but one never knows. On arrival in the small town on the way to cemetary, we called into an ASDA store and I noticed the name of the lady paying in front of me was the same as my mother's first husband - BUGLASS (an unusual name) - whom my mother had married at the outset of WWII and divorced at the end, never to hear from him.

My daughter has six step-siblings due to my first partner having two children from a previous marriage and my present husband having four, Two of these siblings are girls and the coincidence is that whilst there is at least twenty years difference in their ages (so popular name trend is discounted), all three girls have married boys named Christopher but the biggest coincidence is that the two older girls married a Chris Thomas (not the same one). I, for several years worked with a Chris Thomas and either this is the most common name in England or this is a huge coincidence?

I was once in the London Underground in mid winter and a girl caught my attention because she was only wearing a vest in the freezing weather. Once outside, I again saw her ahead of me crossing the road. A few minutes later I arrived at my destination only to see her press the buzzer to gain access to the building. I let the door close behind her and pressed the buzzer in turn. I went up the stairs and went into my client's office. The girl was sitting at a desk!

When I was about 12, for my birthday, my dad took me and a few friends on a "Mystery Tour". On the way in the car, it was eventually revealed that we were going to see a crash. Sure enough, soon after we stopped in a lay-by for lunch, a car towing another car drifted into the lay-by, skidded on the gravel, missing me by a couple of feet and then veered back out into the road with both cars smashing hard into the central crash barrier. Luckily no one was hurt. All my friends were seriously impressed and some really believed he had staged the crash.

I moved to Dublin from London 12 years ago when I was 18. While in Dublin my Mum called from London to say her friends neice was studying in Dublin, and would I mind meeting her and 'making friends'. I told my Mum that we weren't children, and that I didn't really have the time to meet up, (how nice of me!) after that conversation I thought nothing more of it. A couple of weeks later I went for a drink after work, one of my good friends turned up with a girl he had started seeing from Scotland. She was a lovely girl and we got on great.